It was only a matter of time before the Biden administration began to withdraw its support for Israel in an effort to appease anti-Israel Democrats in Dearborn, Mich.
That America as a whole would flip-flop less than six months after the horrors of Oct. 7 was less predictable. That it has done so is suggested by the latest Gallup poll, in which 55 percent expressed disapproval of the Israeli war in Gaza, with only 36 percent approving (a swing of 29 points compared to last November, when the campaign began).
Conventional wisdom suggests that as Michigan goes this year, so goes the election. More specifically, that Joe Biden loses the election if he loses Michigan, and that he loses Michigan if he doesn't do what he is now doing, which is betraying Israel in increments.
Hamas wants the destruction of Israel; most Democrats, including Biden, just want to prevent it from being able to defend itself, which amounts to the same thing in the end (only 18 percent of Democrats in the Gallup poll support Israel's Gaza war, compared to 64 percent of Republicans).
Democrats who claim to support the Palestinians rather than the Israelis fail to recognize that little space exists between the Palestinians and what the Palestinians support, which is Hamas.
As such, and consistent with other polls and items of evidence, a recent poll from the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that no less than 71 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank approved of what Hamas did on Oct. 7. An even more remarkable 93 percent of the respondents claimed that Hamas didn't commit any murders and rapes of Israelis on that day, although we all know they did.
Perhaps most crucial, 64 percent on the West Bank and 52 percent in Gaza said Hamas should rule Gaza after the war, which 64 percent predicted Hamas would win.
Under such circumstances, Democrats who are supporting the Palestinians are actually and objectively supporting Hamas, which is equivalent to supporting terrorism.
There is no meaningful distinction between Hamas and the Palestinians because Hamas is supported by the Palestinians and they approve of the terrorism it commits, an admittedly politically incorrect and discomforting conclusion, but an inescapable one nonetheless.
Like the blind squirrel and his nut, Donald Trump, for once, got it right recently when he said that Biden can't support the police because his base won't let him. The same can be said for Israel and the Democratic base, which has turned against the Jewish state over time in tandem with its embrace of identity politics and intersectionality theory, which identifies the Jews as oppressors and the Palestinians as oppressed. The latter are allowed to use whatever tactics necessary to overcome their oppression, including terrorism (which is now neatly redefined by the left as resistance).
As for the sane part of America (meaning the non-woke/non-Democrat part), the slipping support for the Israeli war in Gaza revealed by Gallup suggests a logical disconnect in thought; more specifically, a failure to match ends and means. Americans believe that Israel was justified in going to war against Hamas, but for some reason disapprove of the way Israel is waging that war, without specifying what other ways there might be for Israel to do so in order to achieve its objective, the destruction of Hamas.
Looked at dispassionately, there are only two such ways: Israel can annihilate the Gaza Strip, without regard for civilian casualties, or it can fight the kind of painstaking, drawn-out war that poses greater risk to its own troops and seeks to minimize but can't entirely avoid such casualties.
The first option was rejected by Israel for rather obvious moral reasons, although the war would have been over by now if it had been chosen. The second option, in itself a testament to Israeli concern for civilian casualties (or at least global perceptions of how Israel does or does not seek to minimize them in the conduct of its operations) was chosen instead, leading to the longer war that has provided sufficient time for the inevitable mobilization of world opinion against Israel and the equally inevitable reversal of the Biden administration's position out of craven fear of the electoral consequences in Michigan.
Americans critical of how Israel is conducting its campaign in Gaza and who cite civilian casualties as a reason for demanding it cease (despite the fact that Israeli tactics are designed to minimize and Hamas tactics designed to maximize them) are thus left to explain why similar moral qualms didn't prevent the American firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo or an invasion of Okinawa which killed many times more civilians in less than half the time as have died in Gaza as a result of Israel's war.
And then we can talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There is, in all this, no reason to believe that Hamas exists on a different moral plane than the perpetrators of the Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking.
Apparently, some counties can fight just wars against evil foes to the bitter end, inflicting as many casualties as necessary to prevail, and others cannot.
An explanation for why this is so might be helpful.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.